Bio:
One of the premier bluegrass fiddlers of his generation, Mike picked up a fiddle at age four and his talent was recognized early. In 1993 he was chosen to be part of the Bluegrass Youth All Stars at the IBMA's award show. Later that year Mike made his Grand Ole Opry debut as a guest of Alison Krauss.
His list of guest apperances over the years is a who's who of bluegrass legends including Bill Monroe, Jim and Jesse, Ralph Stanley, Mac Wiseman, Doc Watson, Larry Sparks, Doyle Lawson, and J.D. Crowe. After high school Mike briefly toured with then-named Dale Ann Bradley and Coon Creek before joining Rhonda Vincent and The Rage in 2000. At the 2001 IBMA awards, Mike took his first Fiddle Player of the Year award, and shared the title of Entertainer of the Year with Rhonda Vincent and the Rage. In 2002 Mike rejoined The Dale Ann Bradley Band. That year he won the Fiddle Player of the Year award and again in 2004. Mike's first project as a Rounder recording artist, "Flame Keeper," was released in February 2002 and was chosen the IBMA's Instrumental Album of the Year. In 2004, Mike shared the Instrumental Album of the Year award with Tom Adams for "Tom Adams and Michael Cleveland Live at the Ragged Edge," an album of fiddle and banjo duets. In September 2006 Mike took home his fourth Fiddle Player of the Year Award from the IBMA, and his second solo album on Rounder Records, "Let 'Er Go, Boys!," won Instrumental Album of the Year. A year later, in 2007, Mike won his fifth fiddle player award and has won it every year since for a total of ten, making him the most awarded in that category.
Today Mike is a sought-after guest and has performed with Vince Gill, Marty Stuart, The Mark Newton Band, J.D. Crowe and the New South, Audie Blaylock and Redline, Melvin Goins and Windy Mountain and The Wildwood Valley Boys. He is also an active studio musician, and his credits include the 2005 GRAMMY-nominated "A Tribute to Jimmy Martin: The King of Bluegrass" and a 2003 GRAMMY winner, Jimmy Sturr's "Let's Polka 'Round."
Mike lives in Charlestown, Indiana.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
Roe Entertainment
3412 Roy Avenue
Maryville, TN 37804 [email protected]
Office: 865-982-8885
Cell: 270-302-0992
East Public Relations
300 Hooton Road
Sparta, TN 38583 [email protected]
Phone: 931-808-8083
Compass Records
916 19th Avenue South
Nashville, TN 37212
Toll-Free: 800-757-2277
Phone: 615-320-7672
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).